The City of God Vanquished the City of Man

American Vision ^ | January 19, 2011 | Bojidar Marinov

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Modern American theologians, preachers, and Christians know little of these events. If they have anything to say, it usually is a word of condemnation. They reject what they call the “Constantinian model.” They believe that the church should never preach to the civil government. They believe the civil government has a different sphere of operation, one that the Bible doesn’t speak to, and therefore the church has nothing to say about. They limit the Gospel to a few propositions for individual salvation. The Gospel can’t and doesn’t speak to the civil ruler, they claim. The issues of justice are left to the Old Testament. The New Testament is strictly individual, and it never addresses the culture, the law of the land, or the civil government.

They justify this retreatist ideology by resorting to the argument of “trials and tribulations.” According to the majority of modern theologians, the mark of a true church is persecutions. The more persecuted the church is, the purer it is, and therefore the better and the faster it will grow. If all institutions in a society and a culture are obedient to God, there would be no persecutions, and therefore such a “model” is unacceptable for the true Church. We cannot work to change the culture; to the contrary, we should rejoice when the culture is farther away from God, because then we have persecutions, and the Church grows much faster. Christians under persecutions are by default much stronger, and Christians in a peaceful, righteous society are weaker in the faith. The “Constantinian model” therefore cannot be an acceptable model for the Church.

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Conclusion

"So when you hear a modern theologian talking nonsense about “exile,” “tribulations,” “by the rivers of Babylon” as if those are supposed to be the eternal state of the Church in history, remind them that they have never been through tribulations. Then set before them the example of those who have been, and persevered, and lived to see the victory of Christ over Caesar. Christianity accepts tribulations as a means, and we do not complain about them. But the idolatry of suffering is not a Christian concept, and the early Church’s example teaches this very well. God is not God over eternity only, but over history as well.

"It is time for the modern Church to prepare the ground for its future Nicaea. The City of God vanquished the City of Man before. God will do it again."

[vanilla swirl]

but tribulations coming